Sermon Preached by
The Rev. David McMaster
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Text: Hebrews 6:9-20
Growing up in Ireland meant that in my youth I was never very far from the sea. I remember a time that I was out in a row boat in the bay at Bangor in N. Ireland. I was probably about 12 years old when, together with two younger, ten year old friends, we rented the boat. I rowed for a bit out from the land and then my friends took over. They sat side by side with an oar each and rowed some more. I sat in the stern of the boat and I didn't realize at first that the tide was quickly taking us out, way beyond where we should have been in a rowing boat. It was some time before I turned around and saw that the significant dock and pier that we had come from were now quite far off. I told my friends to turn it around and head back.
They weren't terribly proficient but they managed to turn the boat around, we were headed in the right direction. But the tide was strong and I could see that we were actually losing ground. It was taking us out, farther and farther, and the pier was getting smaller and smaller to the eye and I started to worry, we were in trouble. I had to take over the oars. At 12 years old, I fancied myself as an expert in rowing because I had had a few lessons from relatives and had a fair bit of practice. I put the oars in the water at an appropriate level and pulled heavily again and again and we started to make some headway. But it was a long haul. It took over half an hour of strong rowing to get back to safety and there were times during that half hour that I wasn't sure that I could pull another stroke. I was only twelve and I wished that we had an anchor to drop onto the sea bed, something that would secure us for just a few minutes so that I could have a rest. But these boats were not meant to be taken out of the harbour area. They had no anchor and I was forced to keep going, stroke after stroke. It was such a relief when I docked that boat, sweating and muscles aching. Among other things, I learned very quickly the power of the tide and the value of an anchor.
A good anchor is indispensable on the water. Sailors will tell you that boats need good, solid, anchors and chains if they are to survive strong winds, rough seas, engine failure, and strong tides. Good anchors and chains are made in proportion to the boat and they will hold firm and steadfast, keeping the boat from drifting out or drifting in, keeping it from rocks and other hazards.
It is interesting that the writer of The Epistle to the Hebrews referred to God's being and work in Christ as “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.” He was writing a generation or so after individuals had first believed in Christ and there were those who had not made as much progress in the faith as the Christian leader would have liked, there some who were not as committed to the faith as they once had been, there were others who had fallen back. And the author exhorts his flock, “Don't give up.” “Let us go on to maturity in Christ and not fall back (6:1ff)” “Let us run with perseverance the race set before us (12:1).” God has promised great things to us (6:13ff.), therefore, let's keep going and take hold of the great salvation that lies before us (6:9, 12, 18).“ For we ”have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul,“ the certainty of Jesus and his work (6:19).”
I want you to hold on to these thoughts for a moment while we think about the end of 2009. Today, we stand at the gateway to a new year, a new decade, and for Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, a new century in its existence. It is exciting to be on the verge of centennial celebrations that will span the entire year. But think for a moment, think of all that has happened since, in 1910, a group of people began to meet in the Deaconess' Home at the corner of St. Clair and Avenue Road with the goal of establishing a new Methodist congregation and church in the Avenue Road Hill district. Think of the tremendous, human accomplishment, for instance, during this time. Electricity has turned from a scientific curiosity into an essential tool, a part of every home and business. So to is running water, indoor facilities, telephones, automobiles, radio, television, computers and the internet. Aircraft can now take us anywhere in the world in a matter of hours. We have put men on the moon; split atoms, and discovered insulin and penicillin. We have given people new hearts, lungs, kidneys, formed life in a test tube, and cloned animals. There have been so many accomplishments over the years that this congregation has been in existence.
In all our advancement, however, one cannot deny that the sea of religious thought in our city and in our land has changed and is heaving with unrest as never before. Since, perhaps, the 1960s, the minds of many are disquieted, fidgety, and in search of new things. The widespread appearance of other religions has caused us to question our own tradition. Opportunities for leisure are such now that we can entertain ourselves to death and never deign to inquire into the deeper things of life. Technological advances, they are so significant that some feel little need for God. In a way, for many, God has become irrelevant.
Yet for all our advances and dissatisfaction with traditional religion, most human beings still find themselves to have spiritual moments and needs. Perhaps, it is when a person realizes that life and endless leisure can be monotonous. Or maybe it is in the fact that deep down, the best minds recognize that science and technology have not answered all our questions or given us total control. There are still things beyond our power and we still encounter times of crisis, hatred, evil, suffering, the storms of life, disease, death, things that force us to ask the big and deep questions.
In an attempt to find answers, some have been turning to, for instance, what has been branded “new-age religion” with its angels and powers and light and all manner of “touchy, feely” stuff that is often accepted uncritically. Others investigate alternate traditional religions such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and travel to various Ashrams. When it comes to Christianity itself, some have embraced a fundamentalist faith, some a liturgical faith, some syncretize Christianity with other beliefs, and it has all left many Christians bewildered. Many are not quite sure of their faith, doubts abound, we want some sort of assurance. We want to know that our fore-fathers and mothers, 100 years ago, were on the right track and, ultimately, that we are too. Perhaps, at the turn of another year, at the turn of a decade, and for this church, at the turn of a century in its existence, we need to remind ourselves that we do have a strong anchor for our souls and strong chains that keep the ship we know as, The Church, tied securely to the anchor.
The writer to the Hebrews writes of Christ and all that he has done as our anchor and as we think about Christ, I would like to set before you briefly three strong chains that hold our ship to that anchor, chains that hold us firm and assure us of safety through the storms and tides of faith and life and thought.
The Historical Christ
We have just seen another Christmas Day come and go and the first chain that holds us to the anchor is the historical nature of the things related to Jesus, the undeniable arrival of Jesus Christ in history. Christianity is not the product of some person's mind. It is not mere made-up wisdom. The Christian faith has an objective element to it, it is rooted in time and space and history. About 2,000 years ago a child was born in Bethlehem of Judaea. A person can go to Israel today and still hear a tour guide say “Jesus Christ was born here.”
Jesus' life is testified to in the Gospels.. There are non-Christian, Roman and Jewish writers from the first and second centuries who mention or allude to Jesus or his followers, Tacitus, Suetonius, the Birkat ha-minim (a series of early Jewish benedictions). There is Pliny, and Josephus who wrote, although some suggest there is some Christian interpolation in the passage,
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. (64) And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross [2], those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day [3], as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named for him, are not extinct at this day. Jew.Ant.18, 3, 3.
While some religions have their entire origins in myths and legends, and “spiritual thoughts,” Christianity came out of Jewish tradition and began with a birth. A birth that occurred in a place we can visit. After the birth, the child grew and as a man he lived and taught great things. He died a terrible death. Then, by a method not fully understood, he was witnessed beyond death. His life, death, and particularly his reappearance so influenced eleven runaways that they and others devoted their lives to his gospel, sometimes to the point of martyrdom. They had an experience and told the story no matter what the cost. If it had been refutable, they would have been a laughing stock and silenced. But it was not and through their message the Church was born. Christianity was rooted in event and history. It has an objectivity to it.
The Significant Christ
A second chain that I set before you keeps us secured to the anchor is the strange and phenomenal fact that we are still discussing who Jesus was, what Jesus said, and what Jesus did 2,000 years after he walked on this earth. A figure who can be dismissed, does not remain a live issue in peoples' minds for 2,000 years. There have been good authors who have been long forgotten. Some great men and women have attracted some interest for a time but Jesus and his teachings were so significant that his words and deeds have been translated into every known language and taken all over the world. What Jesus said, his standard of loving has enthralled the imaginations of people in every race under heaven. His standards of morality have been a light to the paths of many. As one reads of his life, it seems to illumine both the word “human” and the word “divine.” The fact is that we cannot get away from a man who lived 2,000 years ago says something and this too should encourage us that there is something very significant about Jesus.
The Personal Christ
The third chain that secures us to the “great anchor of the soul” is experience. It is the fact that countless men and women in history claim to have experienced Jesus Christ in their lives and people still do today. The fact that Jesus lived in our world 2,000 years ago, and the fact that we are still talking about him, are external to us, things that may or may not make a significant claim on us. They are objective realities that may help us ground our faith and belief. On their own, however, they can be responded to with a “what have you done for me lately” sort of comment. But there is another whole side to Christian faith that when it occurs, is not easily forgotten. It is the existential experience, the subjective reality, the personal encounter with Christ through the Spirit.
I don't know what your experience of Christianity has been but I can remember as a small boy being led by my parents to pray and talk to God. Then, as I entered my teenage years, I had places to go, people to see, things to do and God, whom I could see anyway, sort of faded away. But I also remember some events that took place when I was 20 years old that turned my understanding and life upside down. These were things that I have never been able to dismiss or explain in any other way than with the words, “I had an encounter with God.” And that encounter changed my life so dramatically that I am still feeling the effects today. The world may not buy into these kinds of experiences, they are personal, subjective, but where they have happened, they are life altering. One hymn writer captured the experience with these words: “He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today! He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way. He lives. He lives, salvation to impart! You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart.”
There will be people who think that that's just nonsense, but it's the sort of thing that the Word of God describes as being associated with the coming of the Spirit. And perhaps, if it is in the word of God, the word that the church takes as sacred and inspired, we should pay more attention to it and be more open to the possibility that God may encounter human beings even today. For when we do, when we will allow subjective reality to come together with the objective realities of Jesus, and where these things are actually experienced, they produce a tremendous hope and assurance of realities that lie beyond the five human senses.
When considering the possibility of personal encounters with God, don't take my word alone on it. Take the word of C.S. Lewis, he and J.R.R. Tolkien were leading figures in the English faculty at Oxford in the early and middle years of the 20th century. Lewis has left us with, among other things, the tremendous Chronicles of Narnia. He was not just a writer of children's books but a deep thinker and teacher of literature. Lewis describes in wonderful, erudite terms his encounters with God in his book, Surprised by Joy. The encounters for him were moments of great joy. Or take the word of the great German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died for his role in a plot against Adolf Hitler. Bonhoeffer went beyond the objective Christ that was the focus of the theology of the day and spoke of “the Christ for me,” the personal Christ that brings the whole faith to life within us and assures us that God is at work still in our midst. Think of the countless Christians over the centuries who have claimed that they have experienced Christ. Many of them educated and persons of intellect, can they all be wrong?
What about ordinary people? I had a Christmas card a few years ago from Ally. One of her closest friends, Ernie, was dying from leukaemia in Princess Margaret Hospital. Ernie was a good friend of mine and I had met Ally when she came over from England to visit Ernie in hospital. It was not an easy trip for her, she was suffering from cancer herself, she was sick and in a wheelchair, when she went back to England she was to have more surgery. But while here, together we spoke of the things of God. Ally and Ernie had both had deep personal experiences of Christ that had brought them into a close friendship. It was such that Ally was willing to make the most difficult journey to see Ernie before he passed away. It was months later, Ally sent me a card. She wrote about how the doctors had given her a negative prognosis and that she had decided to come off most of her medications so that she could make some contribution to this world. She had about six months to finish her Ph.D. dissertation in New Testament Studies and continue working on a book, “A spiritual guide to facing death.”
In spite of all that life had thrown at her, the thing that I learned most about Ally was that she was a person of tremendous faith and hope. She had a hope that went beyond this life, a hope she wanted to share with others. It was a hope founded in Christ. No matter what, Jesus was her anchor, and the reality of Christ and her own strong experience of him were the strong chains that tied her to Jesus and kept her going in faith. What allowed her to make a long, arduous journey for someone so ill, what gave her the desire to write and leave to posterity something that may help others? It was a strong faith, she had this anchor that brought assurance that greater things lay before her in God.
Ally was an ordinary person moved by God …and we too can have the hope of this ordinary person, “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.” Maybe we need to turn our minds to the anchor in this time of great religious uncertainty. Perhaps, during this time, at the change in the year, decade, and century for Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, in the midst of the unrest in the sea of religious thought that is around us, we need to align or realign ourselves with our anchor, Jesus Christ, to help us persevere, to run the race set before us, and to help us take hold of the prize that lies ahead.
I don't know whether or not that hope or that assurance is a part of your experience, but if not, perhaps this is the time to rethink, to search yet again, through prayer, through devotion, even by speaking to any one of our ministers about it. For it is our prayer that even in these days of ambiguity, you would experience the fullness of God and know his presence and salvation.
During the week, Jean told me about a woman who had recently lost her husband. He was a fine Christian man but the woman was not quite sure about the faith and she asked Jean, “Do you think he is in heaven?” Jean replied, “I am certain of it.” There's the sure and steadfast anchor of the soul. Amen.